Hi Jacob,
Glad to hear you found that in the TM65 Appendices!
As MEP supply chains are generally pretty global, my understanding is that where no EPD exists in the North American context, PEP’s can be considered relevant and I am certainly referencing PEP’s when available and suitable, with an uncertainly layer. The key barrier is certainly a person’s fluency in French - technical documents all to often go well beyond the level of French even (non-Quebecois) Canadians learn in school.
And agreed with Kayleigh that they are better datapoints than TM65 estimates, but that is because (again, per my understanding, which is likely not perfect) PEP’s are done to the ISO 14025 / EN 15804 standards, making them effectively EPD’s, and so are much more rigorous datapoints that take much more time to produce. As the point of CIBSE TM65 is to provide a stepping stone or path to an ecosystem where we have EPDs for more/all elements, this isnt a problem (as TM65 doesnt seek to replace EPDs, but rather to drive demand for them).
One additional point to note - while Mechanical / Plumbing components are generally pretty similar across the Atlantic (Air and Water don’t behave that differently in North America vs Europe), the differences in Electrical components is sometimes much more complicated, as the different voltages make it tricky to distinguish what is functionally equivalent. That’s in addition to Kayleigh’s great comment about the naming conventions as a cautionary tale - It’s a challenge that we didn’t realize was so complex until we were in the middle of a project (and the Aussie’s call certain things a third name…)